SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

By Sarah the Gardener of team ‘Sarah the Gardener and her Reluctant Diggers’.

They are Kiwis eating food grown and produced within a 200 km radius for 30 days of April in the Happyzine Eat Local Challenge.

I’m Sarah the Gardener and I am dragging my reluctant family through the next 30 days of eating locally.  We live on a small slice of rural land near Pukekohe in the very northern Waikato.  I was actually quite surprised just how far 200km is.  Aside from being smack bang in the middle of fertile horticultural and agricultural land there is a lot food production going on in our neck of the woods.

Sarah the Gardener and her Reluctant Diggers

We grow most of our veggies and have chickens and have recently ‘swapped’ some lamb for meat. So I felt quite confident as we approached this project, until I went shopping to prepare the cupboard for this journey.  That came as a bit of a shock when I realised the state of the average person’s food options available.  The concerning thing is with all the ‘chemicals’ and calories, finding out where food comes from is the least of consumers concerns.   Just to turn boxes and packages upside will reveal food from a million miles away.  Most people don’t look.  I considered myself aware of this sort of thing, but I surprised myself.

Though we are sorted for veggies

So I think the key to this project is wholefood eating, which is pretty much what we do already although not strictly.  Starting off we may be a bit wobbly, but so we don’t starve, we may begin with close enough is good enough until we find our feet.  This is going to be a bit of a learning curve.

We have decided our basic to ‘cheat’ ingredient is sugar.  Mainly because I have crops to process and wouldn’t want them to go to waste.  The concession to this is sugar is processed within the 200kms.   We are also going to consider coffee in the 5% or poor Hubby the Un-Gardener won’t make it through the month.  And as a pure and simple cheat the Easter Bunny will be stopping by with chocolate eggs for the kids.

I have an existing blog at gardeningkiwi.wordpress.com and have already blogged about this adventure a couple of times as I prepared myself and family for the journey:

• https://gardeningkiwi.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/were-going-local/
• https://gardeningkiwi.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/how-exactly-do-you-define-local/

I have also generated some interest on my facebook page and on my You Tube channel:

• https://www.facebook.com/sarahtherealgardener
• https://www.youtube.com/user/gardeningkiwi/videos

I’ll continue to share in these places and also on twitter at @SarahtheGarden.

I’d like to wish all the other locavores the best of luck.

Sarah the Gardener : o )

Tags: eat local, eat local challenge